Epson Artisan 710 Color Inkjet All-In-One Printer

5 comments

1. 

   Average Joe on December 13, 2009 at 6:33 am

   The Epson Artisan 710 is a remarkable printer. If you haven’t owned a photo printer since the mid 90’s, it’s time to take another look as technology has come a long way. Gone are the days of dried out ink heads because the printer wasn’t used for a week. Gone are the blurry, pixilated nasty images that people tried to pass off as photos. These machines go the extra mile and really print excellent photos.

   Back in July 09, I purchased a Canon MP9800 for my wife’s birthday. She fell in love with it and has been happily printing photos. When she initial saw this printer, she snubbed her nose at it and said she would expect the Canon to be her #1 choice. She laughed even more when she hear it printing, as it sounded like a squeaky mouse.

   Well, after putting both printers through their paces, she was surprised to find that she really liked the Epson photos better. I even did a blind photo test, printing 2 8×10 photos on Canon’s Pro platinum photo paper. (Yes, I didn’t even use the Epson paper) The photo selected was a scenery action shot where we were in a car traveling about 45 mps. After reviewing the photos, it took her about 30 seconds to select a winner. She was very surprised when I told her it was the Epson’s photo. Imagine that, Epson beat Canon using Canon’s own paper. Just to make it fair, I printed the same picture using different settings on the Canon, but the outcome was still the same. The 710 still won in clarity, detail and overall look.

   Next, we took our digital prints to Costco and had some 4×6 pictures printed. We printed the same pictures using the Epson and Canon. To us, the Canon and Costco pictures looked similar while the Epson’s colors just looked better and again, the picture had more detail. Now, don’t get me wrong, both home printers’ photos looked better than Costco’s, but the Epson was our personal choice.

   The Epson has a multifunction paper tray, which means you will be swapping out normal paper with the photo paper. (I really don’t know why anyone would want to waste the photo ink on non photos.) The tray does feel like wimpy plastic and has little plastic slides to adjust for paper size that are annoying. This tray and the slides are one of the major draw backs of the Epson. On the other hand, while the Canon has a dedicated photo tray in the back, but when you button up the Canon so dust can’t get into it, the photo paper has to be removed.
   
   The Epson also has duplex printing, but again, you know my opinion about printing non photos with these types of machines. I guess you could use just the black ink and not print color documents, but to me, it still isn’t a good use of the machine.

   Our only other complaint about the Epson is that it squeaks when printing while the Canon is very quite.

   So as a photo printer, the Epson Artisan 710 is very nice. It comes with a 2 year warranty which is a nice touch.

   We haven’t had this printer long enough to say anything about the longevity of the product, but it seems to be on par with the Canon MP980, excluding the paper tray.

   Ok, so here is the kicker for all photo printers, the ink costs. This Epson uses 6 ink cartridges which can be replaced individually.
   
   Since this is a photo printer, don’t be surprised when the ink disappears because you are printing color “stuff”. This is a photo printer, not a printer to put in Kate’s room so she can print stuff off the internet. That being said, the Canon and Epson photo ink costs are similar. Since July, we printed about 30 8×10 photos and about 50 4×6 prints on the Canon. So far, we only had to replace one grey ink but the others are getting low. To us, this was a great deal because we are lazy and never took our pictures to labs to be printed.
   
   I can’t say how many photos we will get out of the Epson printer, but we will be purchasing the extra capacity inks once we need them.
   
   We did like the Canon photo software better than the Epson photo software. With that being said, we would still recommend purchasing an expensive photo editing software suite such as Corel Paintshop photo or Adobe Photoshop elements.
   
   So in the end, my wife finally decided that the Canon printer will be donated to family and we would be keeping the Epson for personal use. We love having the ability to print photos at home. We use the scanner about once a week and it is nice having an extra USB port on the front of both printers. We are very happy with the Epson and look forward to printing Photo greeting cards this holiday season with it.
   

2. 

   DLC on December 13, 2009 at 8:28 am

   I have a number of other printers and none of them seemed to like my Windows Vista OS. For over a year, I was totally unhappy with the quality of my printed-at-home photos. No longer. These are perfect, just perfect! Yes, the printer is noisy, but that was not important to me at all. I haven’t tried scanning or printing on a DVD, so I can’t speak to those issues. But if you are like me and crave quality photos you can print in an instant, this printer is wonderful!

3. 

   M. D. Mulhern on December 13, 2009 at 9:11 am

   This took a while to set up and install and is quite a large printer. But we have made some color copies nd the quality is amazing- they look original! Update to come- we are still experimenting with this item.

4. 

   Jonathan K. Perkins on December 13, 2009 at 11:00 am

   It’s astounding what you can get for your money in the world of printers and all-in-ones these days, and the Epson Artisan 710 is a great example of a bargain. It’s compact, it has duplex printing capability and WiFi printing, is attractive and seems well-contstructed. Most importantly, though: It prints photos beautifully. Comparing the photo output to my other all-in-one (a more expensive Brother model), the Epson’s output is clearly superior, especially in the area of color accuracy.

   I did have one significant problem, though, that I was not able to resolve. I suspect the problem has to do with the recent launch of Apple’s OS upgrade (Snow Leopard), the driver for which was not included with the printer. There was a paper insert which advised Snow Leopard users NOT to use the existing installation CD, but to download the updated software it from the Epson support site. I did that, but the printer would still not print wirelessly (no error message, but no output). The user guide refers to several software setup processes that did not launch for me using the downloaded drivers. So that remains unresolved.

   Software glitch aside, the Epson seems to be a top-quality printer. The only things I miss are a sheet feeder ands built-in fax, both of which are available on the slightly pricier model 810.

5. 

   Darwin Sayo on December 13, 2009 at 1:41 pm

   I’ve bought nothing but Epson’s and every single one has died on me. But, they have died because of use. I tend to run them into the ground in a very short period of time. Ink is so expensive these days that as soon as I run out I just buy a new printer. This 710 is the first one I have bought that way exceeds it’s ink replacement costs.

   My main focus when buying printers is it’s CD/DVD printing capabilities. As far as I know the Artisan series is the only set of printers that have the CD/DVD tray built in. It’s incredibly convenient. Quality seems to be the same. I believe there are only two kinds of printable CD/DVD surfaces, the normal kind and a “premium surface” kind. I’ve not tried the premium surface but the normal kind has been just fine. If I need any better quality I’ll just send it out to a vendor to create.

   I also really appreciate the “HP” like paper tray. Unlike other Epson’s the paper is kept in a tray at the bottom of the printer like HP’s instead of a rear feeder. This makes the footprint even smaller. Not only that but there is a second tier in the tray for a secondary type of paper, specifically photo paper.

   Other nice additions that are great but I won’t use very often are the wireless capabilities and the duplexer.